Act­ing is all about ob­ser­va­tion: Diljit

While some be­lieve that act­ing can be learnt by do­ing the­atre, ac­torsinger Diljit Dosanjh (right) feels that act­ing is all about ob­ser­va­tions. “I have never taken a pro­fes­sional train­ing in act­ing. I’m a good ob­server, ab jo banda kam bolega vo ob­serve hi karega. And I feel that act­ing is all about ob­ser­va­tions,” he says.

The ac­tor, who has been singing since his child­hood, em­barked on his mu­si­cal jour­ney by play­ing tabla in his home­town’s Gu­rud­waras in Pun­jab. “I used to do Kir­tans in Gu­rud­waras but I never sang there. Mu­jhe darr lagta tha ki kahi galat na bol dun. I had sung in my school func­tions — I started singing Pun­jabi songs there,” says Dosanjh. And due to his as­so­ci­a­tion with Gu­rud­waras, the Pun­jabi singer is quite spir­i­tual. For him, main­tain­ing spir­i­tu­al­ity is dif­fi­cult. “I keep for­get­ting to be spir­i­tual but there are peo­ple around me, who help me main­tain that con­nect.”

When it comes to choos­ing roles, the script mat­ters more to Dosanjh than his char­ac­ter. “First, I read the script and I try to un­der­stand my part. If the script is weak, then my role will even­tu­ally be weak too. So, I se­lect some­thing that the ma­jor­ity can re­late to,” adds Dosanjh, who con­sid­ers him­self to be a di­rec­tor’s ac­tor.